Is it fun playing against an imperial Knight army?

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**Mywik**

OzTeG8ndPwRfl wrote:

Well considering I caught him without his shield up for one of the skyrays, and got side armor with one dealing two glances and two pens. Which by my calculations would make it statistically likely. And the plasma rifles and fusion caught him without his shield one turn each I doubt the results will be that hard to duplicate. Besides I learned a trick in that game, charge melee with Firewarriors. Eight Firewarriors with stubborn and Ld 10 thanks to my Ethereal that was standing behind them held up a knight for three turns in melee. And since anything that can't hurt something in melee can leave whenever they want. I see tar pitting becoming a serious issue for IK players.

So 8 firewarriors survived 12 D weapon swings + 3x stomp attacks? Either insane luck or this never actually happened. Which is much more likely.

**TedNugent**

OzTeG8ndPwRfl wrote:

And remember a 6 to pen on them does 1+D3 HPs damage... I rolled quite a few 6's... Not saying I plan on beating his list every time I play it, but it is possible for non competitive lists to pull it off, just make sure the dice gods are with you.

Actually, it's D3 HPs on an explodes result on the damage table.

**AllSeeingSkink**

TedNugent wrote:
OzTeG8ndPwRfl wrote:

And remember a 6 to pen on them does 1+D3 HPs damage... I rolled quite a few 6's... Not saying I plan on beating his list every time I play it, but it is possible for non competitive lists to pull it off, just make sure the dice gods are with you.

Actually, it's D3 HPs on an explodes result on the damage table.

It's D3 additional points, so effectively D3+1 all up.

**Ravenous D**

So your skyray dumped its missiles and rammed one, then dumped its missiles and killed another.

**Savageconvoy**

Across 4 turns
the Plasma team constantly getting BS5 and no shield: 1 dead Knight and 1.67 off another.
The Skyrays: One dead knight total.
Missile team: Commander gets 5 S7, rest of squad has 8 S7.
13 shots, 10.83 hits, 1.8 glances and 1.8 pens, 0.3 chance to explode. 4.2 HP removed in a turn, over 4 turns is another knight dead with 1.8 HP off another. With Tank Hunter this pushes it to 6 HP per turn assuming BS5, range, side armor, and shields aren't in effect.
Fusion suits:
4 shots at BS5 gets 3.33 plus 1 from the commander for 4.33 hits. 3.15 pens, 1.57 explodes getting you one dead Knight per turn.
Under the absolute best case scenario with no return fire and no shields at all, we get about 10 dead knights. But this is all assuming you're always hitting side armor, always getting BS5, never taking a single wound (ID battle cannons), and never getting a single shield in your way.

Do you see how this scenario doesn't add up? You're getting an assumed BS5 across the board with no casualties and no shields taking place and your result is only slightly off that.

**TedNugent**

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
TedNugent wrote:
OzTeG8ndPwRfl wrote:

And remember a 6 to pen on them does 1+D3 HPs damage... I rolled quite a few 6's... Not saying I plan on beating his list every time I play it, but it is possible for non competitive lists to pull it off, just make sure the dice gods are with you.

Actually, it's D3 HPs on an explodes result on the damage table.
It's D3 additional points, so effectively D3+1 all up.

First of all, he said D3+1 additional HP on top of the 2 HP from penetration.

And what you said doesn't make sense because upon a pen you get 2HP and it's only upon a result of 6 on the damage table result that you get the additional D3, which would actually be 2+D3, not 1+D3.

Saying 1+D3 is just disingenuous and it confuses people on the rules. People know how many HPs are stripped on a glance and a pen. Except you, apparently.

**AllSeeingSkink**

TedNugent wrote:
AllSeeingSkink wrote:
TedNugent wrote:
OzTeG8ndPwRfl wrote:

And remember a 6 to pen on them does 1+D3 HPs damage... I rolled quite a few 6's... Not saying I plan on beating his list every time I play it, but it is possible for non competitive lists to pull it off, just make sure the dice gods are with you.

Actually, it's D3 HPs on an explodes result on the damage table.
It's D3 additional points, so effectively D3+1 all up.

First of all, he said D3+1 additional HP on top of the 2 HP from penetration.

And what you said doesn't make sense because upon a pen you get 2HP and it's only upon a result of 6 on the damage table result that you get the additional D3, which would actually be 2+D3, not 1+D3.

Saying 1+D3 is just disingenuous and it confuses people on the rules. People know how many HPs are stripped on a glance and a pen. Except you, apparently.

Huh? Firstly, he didn't say "additional HP", you quoted exactly what he said, no where was "additional" mentioned.

Also, penetrating hits cause 2 HP? Did I misread my rulebook? If so, me and my group have been playing it wrong

Rulebook, page 74: "If a penetrating hit was scored, the vehicle not only loses 1 Hull Point, but suffers additional damage."

"Additional damage" being results from the Vehicle Damage Table.

So when Oz said "on a 6 to pen" I'm pretty sure he/she meant on a roll of 6 on the Vehicle Damage Table. Hence a total of D3+1 hull points.

Where does this additional hull point for penetrating of which you speak come from?

**TedNugent**

Oh, never mind. I'm sorry, I don't know what I'm talking about.

**OzTeG8ndPwRfl**

Savageconvoy wrote:
OzTeG8ndPwRfl wrote:

Well considering I caught him without his shield up for one of the skyrays, and got side armor with one dealing two glances and two pens. Which by my calculations would make it statistically likely. And the plasma rifles and fusion caught him without his shield one turn each I doubt the results will be that hard to duplicate. Besides I learned a trick in that game, charge melee with Firewarriors. Eight Firewarriors with stubborn and Ld 10 thanks to my Ethereal that was standing behind them held up a knight for three turns in melee. And since anything that can't hurt something in melee can leave whenever they want. I see tar pitting becoming a serious issue for IK players.

You fielded in a corner yet managed to get a different facing with your skyrays? The only other two units capable of harming the knights were in reserves. I don't understand the geometry involved in this scenario.

Even unshielded for both skyrays. 12 shots, 10 hits, 1.67 glances and 1.67 pens, 0.28 chance to get an explosion. Total of 3.9 HP.
On side armor without a shield: 10 hits gets you 1.67 glances and 3.33 pens, 0.55 explosions. Total of one dead Knight after exhausting both skyrays into side/rear armor with no shield in place.
SO the statistically likely scenario is really if your opponent doesn't realize that you have no other anti-tank on the board and has trouble deciding which direction to face shields.

Plasma shooting into rear armor no shield, assuming BS5: 12 shots, 10 hits, 1.67 HP.
Wait. The fusion and plasma got no shield?! You had no other anti-tank on the board. How did he not face all shields towards fusion?

Wait. Your Skyray rammed the last knight? What did he spend 5 Knights worth of shooting on turn 1?
This confirms it for me. You were playing against someone who doesn't know what Melta weapons are. Or what Knights are for that matter.

Look man I am not going to give you a full battle report, I have other things to do, but you are forgetting my squad of missile pod suits with tank hunter. Although I now believe that I would not have won via wipe if he actually used his stomp attacks, I still feel confident I would have won as IK can not, last I heard, contest an objective. Even if they can I would have won one to zero at the very least. Just saying with skill, and a little luck they can be beat.

**MWHistorian**

I refuse to fight a full IK army without prior knowledge because my armies as they are would stand zero chance of winning, so what would be the point of even playing.
My SOB army even if tailored, would still be at a huge disadvantage. Half my army would be ineffective. Again, not fun.

**Brotherjanus**

I play Blood Angels and had a lot of fun playing against a list of 6 Knights. We played a 2 on 1 game with myself and another playing Dark Angels. It was a 2250 pt game with each of the Angel players getting half of that. My pre-game guess was that we'd kill 2 Knights before getting tabled but by the end of the game we had killed 4 with another badly injured. We did discover that my DS melta assault squads were better than his ravenwing bikers against the Knights but we didn't feel it was as hopeless as it looked on paper. Keep in mind, I play Blood Angels and didn't feel like I was out of the game.

One thing I forgot to mention, We played the mission with 6 objectives of various value. We all agreed that playing a mission without objectives would be bad as the Knights could stick closer together, though that isn't always protection if a Knight explodes nearby. That D blast can take out more Knights with a chain reaction.

**Savageconvoy**

OzTeG8ndPwRfl wrote:
Look man I am not going to give you a full battle report, I have other things to do, but you are forgetting my squad of missile pod suits with tank hunter. Although I now believe that I would not have won via wipe if he actually used his stomp attacks, I still feel confident I would have won as IK can not, last I heard, contest an objective. Even if they can I would have won one to zero at the very least. Just saying with skill, and a little luck they can be beat.

I'm fully convinced you would win too. Based on the fact that you're facing an opponent who is using a single unit and can't be bothered to remember the rules for it, makes incredibly poor mistakes on shield placement and facing, and lets himself get tarpit by a 12 man unit.
I did forget the missile squad at first, but I did the math later on, though I did forget to factor in tank hunter. Which is even more baffling to the case. Somehow that unit survived an entire round of double tapping battle cannon shots from an entire army of Knights. I can't honestly take this case seriously because it seems like this player did everything wrong based on your account.
My point isn't to argue though. It's to point out that your initial point of "they're okay because I beat them with a non-competitive Tau list" quickly starts to become more and more dubious with each fact revealed. Saying that an unprepared army against an IK and tabling them isn't good advice.

**Deshkar**

edit

**Kilkrazy**

How many points of Tyranids is that, roughly?

**Ravenous D**

Kilkrazy wrote:
How many points of Tyranids is that, roughly?

860 but that's with only 3 10 man gargoyle squads.

**Kilkrazy**

The question is whether these 860 points have a good chance of dealing with a Knight Titan army with five walkers in it.

**XT-1984**

So I played a few games at 1500 with four Knights yesterday and got owned by my friends who I gave a fair heads up.

My IG buddy brought 3 Vanquishers, 3 units of Stormtroopers with Meltas, a unit in a Valk and 2 units on foot behind an Aegis.

Another friends brought Blood Angels and took Dante with an Assault squad with Infernus Pistols. To Deepstrike behind me.

I won 2 out of 6 of my games. They were both lucky wins. And I suspect my opponents were taking pity on me at once stage.

One turn I lost three Knights (one was on 4 HPs , and two on full HP).

The army suffers from DW syndrome. Where you have so few models, you only need a few bad dice early on to screw the whole game for you.

I will continue to think of a good allied detachment for 3 Knights in 1500.

**AllSeeingSkink**

Deshkar wrote:
Someone was mentioning Tyranids.
Skyblight deals with Knights quite well actually and its definitely a strong competitive list. Mass FMCs ganging from multiple sides can quite easily take 1 IK reliably, 2 if lucky.

I also am taking Electroshock Grubs on my Flyrant.

You could charge one with 2 MCs to finish it off from two different directions (ensure kill and explosion dont kill both), pretty sure you'll kill it with smash.

You charge a Harpy in to lower the initiative as well .
Cast Paroxysm to reduce the chance of D weapon hitting as well.

The Skyblight is an "okay" counter to a Knight army, I still don't reckon it will do great against a whole army (maybe if it were 3 Crones instead of 2 Harpies and 1 Crone) and being a FOC breaking dataslate IMO it's not an awesome option. I think the majority of Tyranid players aren't going to buy 3 Crone/Harpy kits along with several boxes of gargoyles to play a such 1 dimensional dataslate list. The lack of manoeuvrability of Flying Monstrous Creatures also makes coordinating attacks tough (I really think FMC's should have been able to pivot freely, but limiting them to a single 90 degree turn each swoop makes it hard to coordinate any strikes after the first one) and as soon as you're not swooping (like, after killing one of the Knights), their lifespan is extremely short.

**Ravenous D**

Kilkrazy wrote:
The question is whether these 860 points have a good chance of dealing with a Knight Titan army with five walkers in it.

More often then not the player will take 2 other flyrants, and they do strike first in combat against Knights in combat and will get the drop on them. So if they triple team each knight with all 3 tyrants they should be able to deal with the army easily. And just pray that when the knight explodes it doesn't take out the tyrants.

**Waarghboss79**

OzTeG8ndPwRfl wrote:
I killed five IK in four turns with a non competitive take on all comers list... Only one guy has them at my local game store, and he lost every game he played in last Sunday's tournament. He got rolled by Eldar, Daemons, and my fluffy Tau. We played a few games after the tournament for fun using the same lists and he lost to Nob bikers and Dark Eldar as well... Don't get the collective freak out.

. B

How did you defeat a knight list using nob bikers? Those things have d weapons and i4??

**kronk**

I would not enjoy playing against ANY super heavies in a game that isn't Apocalypse, and will continue to choose not to do so outside of a specific game as part of a campaign.

I've played a couple of new people lately, and before each game I asked:

1. How many points? I don't care which army you play. Surprise me!

2. Super competitive? Take all comers? Fluffy?

3. No Escalation, super heavies or Stronghold Assault, please.

4. Are you fine with Forge World units?

Boom. Important gak out of the way, game on.

**Kain**

OzTeG8ndPwRfl wrote:
Do nids not have flying monstrous creatures that can take them out? Or a high initiative, high strength creature that could beat them in melee? I am asking because I genuinely do not know. I know very little about the new nid book.

The best flying vehicle killer you can get is either a dual devourer flyrant or a hive crone vector striking stuff.

Neither is well suited for titan killing.

You could try to use HVC Harpies, but a single BS3 twinlinked S9 AP4 blast per 150+ model is garbage for vehicle killing.

**OzTeG8ndPwRfl**

Waarghboss79 wrote:
OzTeG8ndPwRfl wrote:
I killed five IK in four turns with a non competitive take on all comers list... Only one guy has them at my local game store, and he lost every game he played in last Sunday's tournament. He got rolled by Eldar, Daemons, and my fluffy Tau. We played a few games after the tournament for fun using the same lists and he lost to Nob bikers and Dark Eldar as well... Don't get the collective freak out.
. B

How did you defeat a knight list using nob bikers? Those things have d weapons and i4??

I did not, my best friend did, he multi assaulted three of them with two Nob biker mobs, I know he killed two right there and the third blew up when the other two did. My buddy is still laughing about it. Only a few Nobs survived the explosions, but he did a good chunk of damage in one turn. I think his death roller killed one as well. The death roller works in the movement phase so they can avoid the shields with some finagling.

Their small numbers and the fact they only get three attacks that ignore saves is their downfall. And their shield doesn't work in melee either so it is a nice place to be. Remember that AP 2 weapons get +1 on the damage chart, and they hurt eachother when grouped up.

I feel like if you put your big choppas up front to take the D attacks and save your Klaws they fall fast in melee. Besides their ranged weapons can't instant death nob bikers, so they will get to melee most of the time.

**kronk**

Did this player also forget the stomp attacks?

**OzTeG8ndPwRfl**

kronk wrote:
Did this player also forget the stomp attacks?

He didn't use them against me, don't know if he used them against the orks, but against nobs they only wound on 3+ and are saved on a 5++ 5+ so even if he did use them against the Nobs the same thing was likely to happen.

**Ashiraya**

Stomp attacks wound nobz on a 2+

**Co'tor Shas**

Well if they do anything at all. Or they just remove them.

**Boniface**

I can't imagine facing a knight army is fun. It just seems ridiculous to take down that many hard-ass models. If they were like other vehicles with some way of destroying them with 2-3 shots (I'm thinking the explosion result) or didn't nuke the area it might be doable.

**AllSeeingSkink**

Ravenous D wrote:
Kilkrazy wrote:
The question is whether these 860 points have a good chance of dealing with a Knight Titan army with five walkers in it.

More often then not the player will take 2 other flyrants, and they do strike first in combat against Knights in combat and will get the drop on them. So if they triple team each knight with all 3 tyrants they should be able to deal with the army easily. And just pray that when the knight explodes it doesn't take out the tyrants.

The triple team trick will only work once, any Knight player is going to place their Knights within charge range of each other (not exactly hard given they move 12"), so after you triple team 1 Knight, 2 other Knights wander in and kill 2 of your now grounded Flyrants, if you're unlucky all 3 of them with the double tap battle cannons and the explosion of the 1 that you killed.

That's a lot of points worth of FMC's as well, each Flyrant being ~200pts, so the rest of your army is getting thin.

Charging FMC's in to a Knight is really only ever going to work on the first Knight, anything that stops your FMC from swooping is basically signing their own death warrant.

Even when you VS with the Crone, I doubt the Knight player is going to sit around doing nothing, those Heavy Stubbers are all going to be trained on the Crone and if it gets grounded, it's going to be dead.

**OzTeG8ndPwRfl**

BrotherHaraldus wrote:
Stomp attacks wound nobz on a 2+

Stomp attack was described earlier to me as a S6 AP4 Blast template two thirds of the time. S6 on T5 of a Nob biker bounds on a 3+. But that information is dependent on that guy giving me the correct info, for all I know he lied.